


if you must die, sweetheart, die knowing your life was my life's best part

by wckdroot



Series: river song and her doctor [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/F, Lots of Angst, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), lots of tags too, mentions of lots of dw characters and relationships, quite a bit of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wckdroot/pseuds/wckdroot
Summary: She had watched from afar as her body had burned.That was where she had died.So that was what she had been running from.-------------The Doctor's farewell tour but done with a hell of a lot of angst and death :)
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Martha Jones/Mickey Smith, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, OC - Relationship, The Doctor/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor & Amy Pond, Thirteenth Doctor & Bill Potts, Thirteenth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Thirteenth Doctor & Donna Noble, Thirteenth Doctor & Martha Jones, Thirteenth Doctor & Nardole, Thirteenth Doctor & Tony Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song, hints of The Doctor/Rose Tyler - Relationship
Series: river song and her doctor [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975666
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	if you must die, sweetheart, die knowing your life was my life's best part

**Author's Note:**

> possible trigger warnings : alcoholism and grief

  
"I will be back in a minute, Jack. I just need to find where the brandy is this time around."

  
The Doctor stumbled into the TARDIS, Pythagoras' sunglasses placed precariously on her nose, in search of the alien alcohol. She wandered through the console room doing her best not to listen to the time machine's abhorrence at her presence. The TARDIS hadn't stopped berating her since she had found out about it. 

  
It wasn't like she had intentionally set out to find it.

  
She had always checked up on Darillium after those twenty-four years - she would listen to the towers sing to soothe her when it had all become too much. However, when she had arrived at the planet and spotted an unmoving body lay between the towers, she had run over in hopes of saving them but quickly found it was a truly lost cause. 

  
The song of the towers was strong as she swiped the blonde hair from the body's face. She was shocked to find her own face staring back at her. Her signature grey coat had been replaced with her suit, the maroon bow tie unravelled around her neck.

  
She was lifeless in her own arms. 

  
Both hearts silent.

  
The Doctor carried out her own funeral that day, now deprived of the family she had at Lake Silencio all those years ago. Whatever she was, the start of the Time Lords? A Time Lady herself? her body was too powerful and could never be in the hands of another being. 

  
She had watched from afar as her body had burned. 

  
That was where she had died. 

  
So that was what she had been running from.

  
The Doctor had finally made it onto Jack's final stag do and she was glad this time that she liked at least some alcohol even if it barely worked with her Time Lord metabolism. She was lightly buzzed as she searched the room, it was easier in the older version, just hidden in the walls.

  
"Come on, Sexy. I need this...the drink. Please?"

  
A random compartment dropped open beneath the console and the Doctor quickly grabbed the bottle before it fell to the floor.

  
"Just this last one, I promise Old Girl." 

  
With the bottle in hand, she walked up to the door and pulled. 

  
It wouldn't budge.

  
"I'm not going to run away."

  
"Yes, I know I said that last time but me and Jack had nearly got married to a Vinvocci and needed to escape. That would've been an extremely prickly marriage."

  
"Oh come on, that was funny."

  
"I need this, I can't go yet, you know that. I've cheated death was once, I can do it again. I just need more time."

  
"Please, just let me out." 

  
She hailed her fists against the door of the TARDIS, her knuckles splintering at the force, as she heard the engines begin.

  
\-------------

  
The Doctor sat on the floor at the entry for 2 days, her only comfort the bottle of brandy that she had once shared with her wife. 

  
On the third day, she hauled herself up and dragged her body until she stumbled into THEIR her room. It had been centuries since she had last set foot in here, her final moments with River still too raw. She flung herself onto her side of the bed and allowed the bottle to fall from her clutch.

  
She had had people to invite to her last 'death'. 

  
Not this time, she couldn't remember how long she had actually been alone for, since...

  
Heavily, the Doctor shook her head before lifting herself up onto her feet. She didn't dare look back at the empty bed with its sheets still unmade and the scent of River lingering on the pillow. 

  
"Where did Eyebrows leave it?"

  
The wall rose as a wooden corkboard was revealed, photos of all her friends pinned to it. So many faces she had let down in the end but she always kept them with her, always remembered the best parts of them. It had been what had spurred her to get the pictures of Bill's mum, pictures did help - that's what she had to teach her.

  
She slowly pulled all of them down and carefully placed them into her pocket. With a heartfelt sigh, she stepped back into the console room - her pocket full of memories her only anchor.

  
"So then old girl, let's give them one final goodbye."

\-------------

  
"Were they happy in the end?"

  
She tightened her scarf around her neck as she spoke, the cold wind of Bad Wolf Bay hitting her cheeks. The box haphazardly balancing in one hand.

  
"The happiest, Doctor."

  
The smile on the man's face confirmed it as she stepped beside him. 

  
"How did you know?"

  
"No one else apart from me knows they are buried out here, we couldn't be sure with the Doctor's body, even a bit of Time Lord is dangerous." 

  
The Doctor couldn't help but think of her own body burning. 

  
At least that was known in every universe, that dead Time Lord's were still as dangerous as the alive ones. She gently pushed her hands forward offering the box to him.

  
"I came to give this back, I kept it safe for her just in case."

  
He carefully opened the box and clutched the material of the jacket inside. 

  
"She always hoped you come back you know, show her a new face if you got one."

  
"Oh I don't know about that, this one might've given her a bit of a shock."

  
The pair laughed as the waves rolled against the sand, the horizon peaceful.

  
"Rose would have loved you still. She didn't leave anything for you, I'm sorry. There is some stuff at the house if-"

  
"It's okay, I was never going to be the man she truly wanted. That's the problem when you're an alien who changes their face and doesn't age. I came to peace with that a long time ago, she chose him. She chose a better life, a happy one with a version of me that was human enough to love her right, I can't blame her for that."

  
"They grew old together as she wanted. He went first, then a few days later she joined him. They left me everything, including Torchwood. I buried them out here, it's where she felt closest to you."

  
"So they never had any-?"

  
"No, no kids. They tried, trust me, it was traumatising growing up with a bedroom next to 'em but no, it never happened."

  
"So Tony Tyler, the last Tyler standing."

  
"Technically it's Tony Tyler-Owens. For now though just me, but me and Alfie are looking into it. Did you ever find someone else, Doctor?"

  
"I did, we were together for a long time but she's gone now too. She wasn't smart enough to leave me like your sister."

  
The Doctor chuckled solemnly before revealing the TARDIS from her invisible position. She slowly walked up to the door and threw it open.

  
"Doctor?"

  
"Yeah?"

  
"Thank you... for coming. Rose would've been happy that you came."

  
Tony offered his hand, which she shook.

  
"That's all I ever wanted."

  
\-------------

  
She threw her body down into the empty passenger seat, slamming the car door behind her. The Doctor barely had time to open her mouth before a pair of arms were wrapped around her shoulders squeezing her tightly.

  
"Doctor, I thought you'd forgotten about me."

  
"Martha Jones, how could I ever forget you?"

  
The Doctor pulled back to see her properly, she looked happy but the Doctor could see the heaviness, the weariness in her eyes. 

  
"Why are you here, Martha? Haven't you got some life to with Mickey Smith? Kids, a mini-you that's named after your most dashing friend?"

  
"No one is gonna call their kid 'Doctor', Doctor."

  
The blonde quietly huffed before Martha continued.

  
"I'm here because it was what Wilf wanted. He kept trying to contact you, even tried following the trail of some crop circle in a place called Leadworth that had your name. He eventually got your number somehow, said a woman with space hair gave it to him and he kept ringing you. Every day until he died in hopes you would show."

  
"Martha, I didn't know I would've-"

  
"I know, it's easy for you in your blue box to forget about us humans. We know that, the ones who travelled with you but him... He only saw the man who saved him and made his Donna realise how truly special she was." 

  
She held the Doctor's hand as she spoke, her eyes softening with tears as she did, 

  
"The TARDIS redirected one of the calls to me, he remembered me from the video call so he trusted me. He'd call me every day pretending it was about Donna but really, I think he was hoping I'd say you'd shown up." 

  
"Not long after we had first spoken, he was diagnosed with a stage three brain tumour. Apparently, it had mutated after being exposed to a minute amount of radiation. He asked me to check on Donna, I promised him I would. A few days later, Sylvia phoned and told me he had passed but Donna had been with him and he had been smiling even then. All he ever wanted was her to know how extraordinary she was."

  
"Martha Jones, you are a far better person than I ever could be."

  
They sat in silence staring out onto Donna's drive, the Doctor watched as a spaceman windmill spun in the wind.

  
"I sit here and watch her have a life without you. She looks so lost and scared. So scared that she's lost something she can't even remember."

  
"I don't regret it, I'd rather her be alive and human than part Time Lord and dead."

  
"Was that your choice to make, Doctor? I know death must be something you don't exactly fear with your whole regeneration process but if she had accepted that? Was it still fair? She was going to stay with you forever."

  
"They always say that."

  
"But she really meant it, you were the best thing that ever happened to her."

  
"You're wrong. It was the other way round, you were both my best mates. Both of you. You both saved my life so many times without even knowing it. Martha, you were smart, so very smart for getting out."

  
The Doctor threw her arms around Martha, both of them choosing to ignore the tears on Martha's cheeks.

  
"Doctor, why did you come back?"

  
"I had to say goodbye, I don't know if I will be back to Earth for a while. Give me a few days before you tell what's left of UNIT, you're not the only one who deserved a goodbye."

  
"It's never goodbye with you, you always show up again even if it is several years later and when I've got kids who will probably shout at me for not introducing them to Doctor from their bedtime stories."

  
"Oh, so there is a little Martha Jones running about?"

  
"Two actually, twins. Odessa and Jenny Smith. Odessa after Mickey's mum and well I couldn't name either of them Doctor but I thought I could honour you another way with Jenny. I know how much she meant to you, even if you only got to be her Dad for a few hours."

  
Fresh tears soaked her cheeks as the Doctor opened the car door and exited the vehicle. Martha's hand rose to a salute before she even realised what she was doing.

  
Maybe Martha was the one she damaged the most. 

  
Death was an end, it might have been easier if she had been, then the Doctor wouldn't have to face the repercussions on the people she loved because of the world she took them into. The Doctor had changed the course of Martha's life, had turned her into UNIT's loyal medic who would tear her own planet apart in a blind trust that the Doctor would save them all. 

  
The truth was Martha had grown into the definition of Doctor that travelled among the Gamma Forests, a mighty warrior. Something to be feared and praised simultaneously. The healer in her was still present but so clouded by what she had seen.

  
Here she was sat outside the ghost of the Doctor's best friend's house in trust that it would be what the Doctor wanted. 

  
What the Doctor would order.

  
The Doctor deftly pointed to the house behind her before speaking,

  
"I've got an Earth girl who needs to keep forgetting me."

  
She wandered forward. 

  
Standing at the bottom of the drive, hands in her pockets, she took in the house - still too much of a coward to go and talk to her, even now.

  
After a few minutes of just standing, she went to turn around, to have her last silent goodbye to be spoken to the bricks of a house, when that familiar voice struck her hearts.

  
"Oi, you!" 

  
The Doctor spun her head. 

  
Everything in her body ached with sadness, with cruel, cruel desperation that maybe she remembered some part of her old friend?

  
"Are you the one that's been stealing my windmills?! I swear to god."

  
Donna angrily pointed at her.

  
She hadn't changed a bit.

  
"There's neighbourhood watch round here, bet Noreen's seen your face now. You better run, 'cos if I catch you, you're gonna wish you weren't bloody born." 

  
Her hand burned cold, empty without Donna's hand in hers.

  
"Do you hear me?!"

  
The Doctor did what she did best, she ran.

  
\-------------

  
"Melody, is that you?"

  
The Doctor slowly walked forwards, the lights of Manhattan revealing her figure but also the body that lay in the bed that just looked too big for one person. 

  
She took a seat in the armchair and ignored the familiar whiff of perfume, which reminded her of Darillium and the Library, that seemed to be embedded in its fabric.

  
"Amelia Pond, the first face that face ever saw."

  
"Doctor?"

  
Amy struggled as she outstretched her hand in search of the Doctor's. She clasped her hand tightly around her Pond's hand, her fingers pulling on the wrinkled skin. 

  
"Changed the face a while back, what do you think?"

  
"Great as always, at least you got rid of the bow tie."

  
"Oi, bow ties are cool!"

  
They both laughed for the first time in a while. It didn't take long before Amy's laughing was hindered as her chest began to heave and endless coughing began. Alarmed, the Doctor gently placed the glass of water from her bedside into her hand, waiting patiently in silence until it seized.

  
"You shouldn't be here."

  
"Since when did I do what I was told?"

  
Amy reclaimed her hand with both of her own, her wedding ring still shown upon her finger unlike the Doctor's. The time traveller couldn't help but gaze at the grey hair that had replaced the telltale ginger she had loved.

  
"You're not supposed to see me get old, you don't like endings."

  
"My Amelia, every fairytale has it's ending and this is ours."

  
"This is mine Doctor, not yours."

  
They fell into a silence as the Doctor struggled with what to say. She should've been comforting her but she had never been any good at that.

  
Looking around the room in deference, her eyes caught on the collection of picture frames on Amy's bedside cabinet. 

  
There was one of Amy and Rory, another of Amy holding a baby Melody. Next to them sat one with the Pond she had yet to meet, Anthony sat on one side of Rory whilst River sat on the other. 

  
The final one sat at the front, Bowtie, River and the Ponds all squished together whilst her past self attempted to take a picture of them all.

  
It was the same picture River and herself has kept on their own bedside table.

  
"It's been so long since Rory... and Melody hasn't been around in a while. Is my daughter okay, Doctor?" 

  
"I'm so sorry, Pond. It's my fault, all of this. You, Rory and...River. I couldn't save you any of you, I am so sorry." 

  
The Doctor flew forward with a carefulness that this body had never had as she cautiously embraced Amy in fear of breaking her fragile bones - Amy crying into her shoulder as they clung to one another. 

  
As she reluctantly pulled away, Amy lifted her hand and tenderly placed it on her face offering her undeserved comfort.

  
"It's okay Doctor. You have always been forgiven, without you, we wouldn't have seen the universe, we might not have had Melody and we certainly wouldn't have had River. I wouldn't have had my best friend."

  
"You were my family, Pond."

  
"Less of the 'were' missus, we always will be. Remember there's some version of us out there right now climbing out of the Byzantium or running from vampires in Venice." 

  
Amy began coughing again and the Doctor couldn't help but note the shallowness of her breathe. The Doctor retook her hand in her own and Amy desperately tried to keep to her strong grip present.

  
"You know there are stories about me across the universe but there's so many about you and Rory too, the girl who waited and the last centurion. In the darkest corners of the universe, people keep hope with the tales of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams."  


"And Melody, she isn't forgotten?" 

  
"Never." 

  
Amy sighed as her head sunk further back into the pillow, the final wisps of strength beginning to leave her body.

  
"Rory's waiting for me somewhere, he always waited for me. Like Melody will be somewhere waiting for you when it's time. Don't you dare forget about your Ponds, okay raggedy man?" 

  
"How could I?" 

  
Amelia smiled, her eyes finally closing as her final breath fell from her lips. 

  
The Doctor slowly stood up, reaching into her pocket to pull the reading glasses she had stolen to place them on her bedside cabinet. Steadily, she leant down and placed a kiss upon her forehead before whispering,

  
"Goodnight Amelia."

  
\-------------

  
The Doctor had managed to dull the redness of her eyes before the TARDIS landed. 

  
"Who are we at now?"

  
She dragged the screen in front of her to check her surroundings but mumbled begrudgingly as the exterior image came into view.

  
"When you think a bad day can't get any worse."  


Incessant knocking began on the TARDIS door, the old girl immediately opening her doors for him to waddle in.

  
Traitor.

  
"So you've finally come back for me. I thought you were dead you know, should have known you'd just left me." 

  
The sound of Nardole rung in her ears - she had sort of missed him, in her own way. 

  
"I don't like what you've done with the place."

  
She rolled her eyes as she stepped into view of the cyborg she had fixed. His non-existent eyebrows raised up in shock whilst he looked her up and down.

  
"Oh, well that's different." 

  
"Really? That's all you have to say?"

  
"You changing your gender is just about the most normal thing you've done."

  
The Doctor huffed, walking out of the TARDIS doors onto an open field much like where she had left him last. She spun around to Nardole who walked out behind her with his arms crossed. 

  
"Aren't you going to show me around?"

  
"Well, this is Doctor, Doctor." 

  
"Doesn't seem the rubbish town you promised me, Nardole. You gotten soft?" 

  
"I am in the right mind to kick your arse you know, you and Bill going like that, so stop the cheek old woman." 

  
The two of them walked forward through the field, the prominent signs of preparation for a battle lingering throughout 'Doctor'. Their silence was soon interrupted by a stampede of children running straight into them and then past them.

  
"BILL!" "BILL!" "BILL!" 

  
The Doctor's steps fumbled as they called for her lost friend. She turned her head around in search for her but was left saddened when she realised what they were truly shouting for. 

  
A cat crawled out from a crate, purring as the children showered her with affection.

  
"We only had one pig so that's Doctor and I thought she would prefer a cat."

  
He had definitely gotten soft.

  
"So I got a pig and she got a cat?" 

  
"Yes, keep up. She was alright for a human." 

  
The Doctor couldn't help but think of chips and magic puddles, of all the love Bill had for everyone and how fierce that love was.

  
"She was amazing because she was human." 

  
"Sap, now come on we don't have all day." 

  
Both of them stepped up onto the porch, not dissimilar to the one on the lower level of the cyber ship. Hazran sat upon it, a shotgun at one side and an empty chair on the other. 

  
"Can you give us a minute?"

  
She looked the Doctor up and down before giving Nardole a kiss and her gun then going inside.

  
"Look at you all domesticated." 

  
"Please, I had to watch you and Doctor Song for twenty-four years. I watched the supposed 'Oncoming Storm' hold his wife's handbag whilst she solved a planet's world hunger. If anyone has ever been domesticated here, it was you."

  
As much as her past self had shunned Nardole's company, their friendship had helped him heal. He had kept parts of River alive with him, even when remembering was painful for the Doctor. 

  
Her wife had known what she needed. 

  
Her final gift to help his grief ease, just a little bit.

  
"How's it going with the Cybermen?"

  
"Thanks to your little suicide mission, it gave us enough time to put in enough measures to keep the majority at bay for now. A few strays get through but we have people to sort them out this time."

  
As if on queue a woman ran up the steps with two rifles slung across her back. 

  
But not just anyone...

  
"Sir, the children want another story about Doctor Song and her husband's travels before they go to bed. You know you've got these kids distracted, distracted isn't good when there are even more Cybermen getting through each day."

  
"Clara..."

  
The Doctor hastily threw her arms around her but soon enough, Nardole was pulling her from the unmoving 'Clara'. She released her awkwardly as she whispered,

  
"You don't have to save me this time."

  
"Sorry, this is the Doctor. She's weird and apparently unable to acknowledge boundaries this time around."

  
"Oi!"

  
Her impossible girl, always there when she knew she needed her. 

  
The Doctor had been waiting for her to show up, maybe a version of her she could save. 

  
She had thought at the funeral, that she had watched from afar, that she had caught a glimpse of Clara's face in the Sheffield rain but she had blinked and the echo was gone.

  
"You're the Doctor? I was expecting someone more of a stupid old man?"

  
"Yeah, new face it happens Clara."

  
The Doctor smiled the best she could, but she knew that 'Clara' caught the lost look in her eye. That day on Trenzalore, when she had thrown herself into their timeline, Clara had become another part of her - a part that knew her all too well even if she didn't recognise her.

  
"I think you have me confused with someone else, ma'am. I'm Doctor Oswin Oswin and we have heard a lot about you."

  
She chuckled as she took Oswin's hand in a handshake. 

  
A Doctor, eh? 

  
Wonder where she got that from?

  
"How about you let me tell the kids a story tonight?"

  
"Didn't think you'd be staying long enough?"

  
"There's always time for a story, Nardole."

  
Oswin led her and Nardole to the barn where all the children sat expectantly. The Doctor threw her coat onto a distant hay bale and took a seat in front of them.

  
"Hiya, I'm the Doctor."

  
She watched their faces light up as they whispered to one another in both excitement and confusion.

  
"Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Amelia Pond and she had a not so imaginary friend..."

Her fairytale captured their hearts and attention and as she brought it to the end with her finding her centurion, the Doctor tried to keep her own hearts from breaking further.

"Now you lot, remember this. You are all fantastic and never let go if you don't want too. We all change, we are all different and that's brilliant. Remember who you are. Be wise and love each and every person who chooses to love you. Hate is always foolish and so are pears. Don't be cruel and never be cowardly."

  
The Doctor stood up, grabbing her coat from across the room before wandering back with it on her back. She said unspoken goodbye's to Nardole across the room then turned to the tiring children once again.

  
"Now don't go waiting for me, you go make this universe so much better. Maybe one day if you're ever so unlucky, you might find me again. Just remember, they won't have had this face yet. No spoilers." 

  
\-------------

  
She goes back to Earth 2021 for the first time in a century.

  
The Doctor gets the rebuilt UNIT to employ Yaz - apparently, she still had some sway and Martha had helped her request.

  
Next, she bought Graham a new chair and gives him Pythagoras' sunglasses. 

  
What else could she give the man she stole everything from?

  
The last time she had spoken to either of them was when Ryan had been pronounced dead.

  
Two gunshots to the heart and they had lost him forever.

  
He had so much of the universe, his life, left to experience and the Doctor had been the reason it was taken again.

  
But this time there was no escape clause for death.

  
No puddle girlfriend or the ability to make a backup in a library or extraction chamber.

  
The Doctor couldn't save him and too Graham and Yaz, nothing would ever make up for that.

  
She could've argued them.

  
Told them that she told them all to stay in the TARDIS but he just had to not listen.

  
Or that she wished more than anything that they had hit her instead.

  
Maybe they'd agree.

  
But in the end, it was her fault, she had failed her duty of care once again.

  
The Doctor always failed her supposed duty of care to every single person she touched.

  
Look at what she was left with, turning to ashes on a planet alone, the only one present herself.

  
The closer they got, the more they got hurt - dying seemed better than a life alive after she poisoned them with space and time.

  
And there had been so much loss...

  
Rose lost her planet, the only universe she had ever known.

  
Jack lost the kindness of mortality.

  
Martha lost her morality and her families safety.

  
Donna lost every moment when she believed the truth, that she was brilliant.

  
Amelia Pond lost her childhood to fish fingers and custard, therapists and a crack in her bedroom wall.

  
Amelia and Rory Williams lost their baby, their Melody, and their real lives.

  
Bill lost the comfort of being human, giving extra chips to pretty girls and university lectures.

  
Graham lost the family he had only just found.

  
Yaz lost her best friend.

  
Ryan lost his life.

  
And River. 

  
River had lost everything. 

  
Her wife had lost her parents, her childhood, her innocence, her husband sometimes, her parents all over again and then her life. 

  
All in the Doctor's name.

  
Who else was a selfish God going to fall in love with other than her own bespoke psychopath?

  
All of it lead to this moment as she stood on the balcony overlooking the towers once again, just earlier - just in time for her death.

  
Finally, the Doctor let the tears spill. Her hands shook as she clung to the railing in an attempt to keep herself afoot.

  
"You know, a Grandad of mine once told me that where there's tears, there's hope."

  
Oh great, now she was seeing ghosts or maybe another memory held in glass.

  
"Thought I'd find you here, Nardole told me all about this place and your fit wife."

  
The Doctor turned her head as the ghost of Bill leant against the rail.

  
Maybe not such a ghost by the water dropping off her fingers.

  
"It is okay if you've had enough, Doctor. If you want peace, you have saved this universe a million times over."

  
"Are you speaking on behalf of humanity for again?"

  
"Don't think I can now I'm a space puddle."

  
So Heather had truly saved her.

  
And had taken her humanity in the process.

  
"Bill, I ruined you, just like all the others." 

  
"Oi, Grandad, you didn't 'ruin' me. You might think that but I could've left anytime. I chose not too because you were the closest thing to family I ever had that wasn't imaginary."

  
The Doctor wiped her tears, looking at the human that had changed her world all over again when she had needed it most.

  
"Bill..."

  
"Shut up I ain't finished. You probably think we stay for the adventures but really we stay for you Doctor, whether you want us or not, we are always with you." 

  
Bill wrapped her arms around the Doctor with a heartfelt human embrace. 

  
"You know if you had met me in this body, I probably would've fancied you instead of having you sorta adopt me." 

  
"Bill!"

  
She rolled her eyes amusedly as Bill took a step backwards.

  
"You don't have to die you know, for this to be over. There's someone waiting for you."

  
"What are you ta-"

  
"River. I'm talking about River Song."

  
The Doctor stared at the empty space beside her where her wife had once stood, where she had promised her, her happy ever after.

  
"Bill, she's gone and has been for a while."

  
"No, she's not. Just because you decided to be a daft mad man and leave her in that library, doesn't mean she's gone. I have tea with her hologram on a Friday. The Vashta Nerada can't eat me when I am basically space liquid. And River told me she was waiting for you, Doctor."

  
"Just like Amelia said."

  
She whispered to herself as she thought about it, about her wife left behind like a book on a shelf.

  
The Doctor didn't have to die today but she could find peace.

  
Enthusiastically, she placed her hand around Bill's and dragged her to the TARDIS. The Doctor clambered through the wardrobe, found her best suit and slicked back her hair. 

  
"How do I look?"

  
"Properly dressed for once but yeah, ready to see your wife. Are you sure about this Doctor?"

  
She looked at her sonic screwdriver, hooked up to the wires that connected to her head. Bill knew the plan, knew where her body had to go after.

  
"Don't think I've ever been so sure about anything."

  
\-------------

Feet? Check.

  
Kidneys? Check.

  
Reliable nose? Check.

  
The Doctor only had a chance to take one step forward when a figure rushed towards her embracing her. They both pulled themselves barely apart from one another, the Doctor cherishing the fact she could thread her finger's through wild curls once again.

  
"Hiya honey, I'm home."

  
"Hello Sweetie."

  
River whispered before kissing her tenderly.

  
The Doctor had never felt so alive. 

**Author's Note:**

> and they lived happily ever after...
> 
> drop any prompts below <3
> 
> @timegirlfriends on tumblr  
> @wckdroot on twitter


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